This patent document relates to optical imaging of tissues.
The need for in-vivo non-invasive cross-sectional imaging of tissue with microscopic resolution for diagnostics and image-guided therapy is well known. Optical Frequency Domain Imaging disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,321,501 has been applied for such imaging.
Optical frequency domain imaging (OFDI), which may also be known as swept source optical coherence tomography uses a wavelength-swept light source to probe the amplitude, phase, polarization and spectral properties of back scattering light from the tissue. OFDI offers intrinsic signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) advantage over the time domain techniques because the interference signal can be effectively integrated through a Fourier transform enabling significant improvements in imaging speed, sensitivity and ranging depth required for in-vivo tissue imaging.